ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN AT ALL SCALES May 2018 Postmodern Los Angeles NYCxDESIGN Heats Up Why Spain Is Home to the Handmade Venice Biennale Preview New at NeoCon
FEATURES NYCxDESIGN 2018 87 New York City has always flexed and swelled to absorb the influences of people and communities from elsewhere. This year s NYCxDESIGN programs, which cross borders between disciplines, neighborhoods, and countries, put the city s formidable creativity on full display. Surveying L.A. Pomo 104 We revisit the city s underappreciated architectural experimentation and discover a variety of unconventional and radical styles some of which even approached fun. Spinning a Yarn 122 Wolf-Gordon worked closely with Mae Engelgeer on a new upholstery collection that employs texture, dimensionality, and a touch of luxury to spruce up contract textiles. Architecture, All Antennae 128 Metropolis talks to Shelley McNamara and Yvonne Farrell, directors of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale and founding principals of Dublin-based Grafton Architects. Stones of Memphis 132 Working with repurposed historic cobblestones, Jeanne Gang conjures up a meditation on monuments and messy civic histories in her firm s pavilion at Venice. Machine for Entertaining 138 With his design for a Manhattan town house, Michael Chen tackles issues of material experimentation, ecology, and urban density all against a backdrop of high society. Old Country 146 Reacting against Nordic minimalism and faceless, industrialized production, Spanish designers continue to drive the Continent s handcrafted, rustic sensibility. Do It, Do It Disco 152 The nightclub has always been a fiercely creative and radical architectural typology, a new exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum argues. SEE INTERIOR PAGES FOR CREDIT INFO; BOTTOM RIGHT: COURTESY BILL BERNSTEIN 4 METROPOLIS MAY 2018
Spinning a Yarn Wolf-Gordon worked closely with Mae Engelgeer on a new upholstery collection that employs texture, dimensionality, and a touch of luxury to spruce up contract textiles. By Luke T. Baker Irregular shapes shaded in a shiny ombré gradient emerge from a solid-groundlike terrazzo studded with precious stones. The rigidity of a rectilinear grid is disrupted by the sinuous winding of a rogue line in metallic fiber. An intricate veil-like form partially obscures a field of pinpoint dots, suggesting shifting layers of overlapping pattern. These complex compositions aren t computer graphics or digital artworks; they re an expressive new collection of upholstery textiles by Dutch designer Mae Engelgeer. With Mass, Points, and Merge, the three new releases of the Matter collection for American design company Wolf-Gordon, Engelgeer defies contract-market convention not just with her novel designs but with contrasting materials and textures that betray a fascination seldom seen in commercial fabrics with tactility, dimensionality, and luxury. This new suite of textiles marks a departure from the reserved line play of the Wolf-Gordon + Mae Engelgeer collection, Engelgeer s first collaboration with Wolf-Gordon in 2016, which featured digital wall-coverings, upholstery, and drapery fabrics rooted in Dutch Modernism. With Matter, Engelgeer draws from her cross-market expertise, designing a range of softer, domestically influenced upholstery fabrics that mix natural wool and cotton with polyester and metallic yarns to bring a warm, luxuriant feel to both workplace and hospitality interiors. Marybeth Shaw, Wolf-Gordon s vice president of product design and marketing who has masterminded licensed partnerships with design superstars such as Karim Rashid, Tsao & McKown, and Boym Partners worked with Engelgeer throughout a roughly yearlong process to shepherd the collection from concept to finished collection launching at NeoCon in June. Engelgeer s design process began with conjuring up what she describes as an atmosphere a sort of feeling rooted in inspiration gleaned from her travels, museums, and fashion, and the storefronts near her Amsterdam studio. She sketched shapes and used photos, material samples, and color swatches 122 METROPOLIS
COURTESY WOLF-GORDON Wolf-Gordon s new line of upholstery textiles, designed by Mae Engelgeer, brings a luxurious domestic feel to commercial interiors. New releases include Merge, pictured in copper-wire color; Points, pictured in granite; and Mass, which Engelgeer sees as the most experimental of the collection, in charcoal. MAY 2018 123
Left: furniture upholstered with Engelgeer s Align textile, from a 2016 collaboration with Wolf-Gordon Below and opposite: Experimentation and research define Engelgeer s design and development process. Sometimes you cannot think that far from behind a computer, she says. In this collection we tried to get a bit of the craft feeling in a way where you can mix the more natural kind of yarns with more modern yarns so you get this new combination. The Dutch designer begins with yarns at her studio, then develops sketches and color patterns, which are converted into digital files at the TextielLab and woven on a Jacquard machine, enabling her to make adjustments and experiment with new materials. to help visualize concepts and give them texture. I don t do any hand weaving, she says of this early stage, pointing out the lack of weaving equipment in her studio. I try to keep free and open-minded in what could work, and I really like to play. With initial sketches in hand, Engelgeer visited the Textiel- Lab, a resource center and fabrication workshop associated with the TextielMuseum in the southern Dutch city of Tilburg. There the sketches were first transformed into digital files and then into physical prototypes on the center s weaving machines. Standing at the Jacquard machine as her samples were woven in real time, Engelgeer was able to revise the design on the spot and experiment with different yarns and fibers. It s a totally different process than sending out a sketch to a mill and trying to explain what you want, she notes. Engelgeer eschews the constraints of practicality during this process of creative exploration: What is important at first is to be super free in using the weirdest yarns, then to later start to make it more suitable for upholstery. Engelgeer sent the experimental samples from TextielLab to New York, where the Wolf-Gordon team, led by Shaw, picked up the thread. We were in love with them, we thought they were so interesting, Shaw recalls, citing the contrast between metallic and matte fibers, the sheen of silk, and the texture of the mohair yarns Engelgeer had selected. But translating the samples eclectic materials and soft hand in a fabric that could pass the industry s durability and safety standards posed a daunting challenge. Wolf-Gordon worked with a domestic mill to manufacture Engelgeer s designs, specifying a higher percentage of wool yarns and a washed finish in order to create the elegant look and feel that elevates these contract fabrics to premium quality. Shaw is typically more hands-off at the outset of production, allowing the designers freedom to develop original concepts that enable Wolf-Gordon to innovate and maintain an edge COURTESY WOLF-GORDON 124 METROPOLIS
Opposite: The collection s palette of colorways ranges from versatile neutrals to bold and unexpected combinations inspired by what s happening in fashion. From top to bottom: Mass in charcoal; Merge in copper wire; Points in deep space; Mass in lake; Points in spring pond; and Merge in starlight. Left, above: The low relief of the asteroidlike shapes woven into the Mass pattern (pictured in cashmere), and the blend of metallic, polyester, and natural yarns used in Merge (top right corner of image), express Engelgeer s fascination with texture and contrast. Left, below: Mass is shown in mahogany and soft brick, Merge in Persian red and cinnamon, and Points (bottom of image) in saffron, unity, and brocade colors. It s always about the combination of a certain type of coloring and the use and the selection of color, she says. within the industry. But she must also ensure that each collection delivers the types of products her specifiers demand, and as the process unfolds, she steps in with a guiding hand and an expert eye, progressively shaping a collection that reflects the designer s intent while retaining its viability for the contract market. During a visit to New York, Engelgeer and Shaw reviewed manufacturer samples and further refined patterns, materials, and colors. [It s] a bit difficult talking via email or phone about textiles, which you have to touch and feel, Engelgeer says. Winnowing out designs that won t work for technical or market-driven reasons, Shaw points out, helps achieve the right variety of patterns, scales, and colorways. In the Matter collection, Mass serves as the statement piece with its bold, outsize imagery and wide repeat, a contrast to the delicate, layered design of Points that rewards closer inspection with secondary details. Merge offers a more traditional design, but still with a touch of the unexpected. The subdued reds muted corals, dusty pinks, and soft mauves that appear in six colorways speak to Engelgeer s fashion-influenced sense of color, as well as an industrywide shift toward warmer hues. Shaw finds that colorways pairing warm and cool tones give designers more flexibility in how and where they use Wolf-Gordon s products. Color trends are kind of like a pendulum that swings, she observes. For many years we have been in a gray, more industrial palette, and it s inevitable that things warm up. In its final state, the Matter collection comprises 20 textiles in three patterns, presenting a range of tones and scales. When I started this collection, I knew exactly what kind of feeling I wanted to get out of it, Engelgeer says. Now, [when I] see the collection together, I m like, Yes, this is what I had in mind. But the design process doesn t end with the completion of the new collection; ideas generated in one project inevitably find their way into future textiles. We re always looking for an outside, independent voice who is going to bring something to our overall collection that really is exciting and forward thinking and very fresh, Shaw says of working with young European designers on licensed collections. I want to be influenced and conditioned by this new work. M COURTESY WOLF-GORDON 126 METROPOLIS